Interview with guitarist Olavi Mikkonen

Interview conducted and transcribed by HannTu

Amon Amarth finally return to the UK on a headlining tour, on the back of an unbelievably good seventh studio album, TWILIGHT OF THE THUNDER GODS, and I was eager to get some of the guys’ thoughts. I got to speak to Olavi Mikkonen, one of their two guitarists. His English wasn’t amazing, but he was friendly and very good-natured, great to speak to.

9th March 2009

The Forum, London

All pics and live review by HannTu

The Swedish Viking gods made their biannual assault on English shores bringing with them some all-star supporting acts and touring behind the ferociously epic TWILIGHT OF THE THUNDER GODS, an album hailed as their best melodic effort since VERSUS THE WORLD. It’s no wonder The Forum was packed to the brim eager to see how the new songs translated live.

"No Pain No Gain" as Scorpions used to sing, but the last weekend of June in the central park of Helsinki was nothing but pure pain from the beginning to the end in a good way. The Tuska Open Air metal festival has been taken place ten years in a row. The first festival took place at the Tavastia club back in 1998. As the years passed by, the festival has grown bigger and carved out its prestigious and now legendary reputation all around the world.

Traditional metal had a minor role on the roster of Tuska 2008. Extreme metal, in different forms, attracted and had drawn many extreme metal hearts. As well, metalcore bands KillSwitch Engage landed at Tuska for the first time with a massive impact. The younger audience appeared to be delighted about that. Power metal had the strongest presence as it had a dominating role last year. But booking Slayer, Carcass, and Morbid Angel were extreme brilliant achievements.

Even though the festival was sold out several months ago, the most surprising thing from the Tuska organization was to let people of the age of 70+ go in for free! All in all a few hundred metal grandpa and grandma’s were witnessed headbanging for several bands!!!

As usual, the whole three piece Finnish Metal-Rules.Com squad attended Tuska again to sense a reek of putrefaction, feel raining blood and obtain the pleasure to kill. Enjoy!!

In the past few years, Amon Amarth has been taking North America by storm. After two separate tours opening for Children of Bodom and releasing a DVD that went gold in both the United States and Canada, it was finally time for the vikings to headline their own tour. Unfortunately, the bands chosen to open for them were not really an ideal choice and were certainly not going to go over well with the Amon Amarth fan base. Originally, Decapitated was supposed to be in the direct support slot, but the recent bus accident that took the life of drummer Vitek forced them to drop off. Opening bands aside, this was a tour that many of us waited years to see, and finally the chance was upon us.

Wow! This is the seventh time that the Finnish Metal-Rules squad made an invasion to the mighty Swedenrock festival. Almost 70 bands descended upon the southern area of Sweden for a festival that turned out to be an utter blast from the beginning to the end! The bill of Swedenrock festival 2007 covers a wide range of metal styles and even classic rock stuff such as Kreator to Black Oak Arkansas and everything between. Therefore, there was at least something for everyone who attended the festival. As usual, the whole festival was once again sold out with around 30,000 people at the area every day. The Swedenrock festival has always had tremendous luck with the weather every year. Once again the gods of weather had given their blessing for this rocking metallic heaven on the earth with an extreme hot and sunny weekend that burned red the skin of several festival goers.

As written in the first sentence, this is already the seventh time that the Swedenrock festival has been featured in the site of Metal-Rules.com, so it is quite logical for us to give an in-depth article of several bands performing at Swedenrock. However we are not able to cover every band, but hopefully you will have a pleasant reading moment… Enjoy !!!